They dispute Bellingen Shire Council’s explanations regarding the need for rate rises, calling them “a misinformation campaign”.

Invited to respond to a press release from BSRA, Mayor Dominic King said the assertions made about council’s financial operations were false.

Attendees at the inaugural meeting, held at the home of Bruce Block, included Bruce Cleary, John Karnau and Bill Marks, with Darcey Browning from Thora and other people from Urunga and Bellingen also expressing interest but unable to come.

“This is in response to Bellingen Shire Council's relentless push for rate rises above the peg and way above fixed income increases,” steering committee member Bruce Cleary said.

The group will be holding 6pm meetings on the same dates as Council’s drop-in meetings to discuss the latest rate rise proposal.

In Dorrigo, this will be January 23 in the CWA Hall, in Urunga it is January 24 at the Bowling Club and in Bellingen January 25 at the CWA Hall.

“We start after the council drop-in meetings finish, but we’ll be located at a different hall,” Bruce Cleary said. “This means interested people will only need one trip to town.”

The BSRA press release states that “In light of Bellingen Shire Council’s recent notification of their intention to apply to IPART for another 19.1% council rate rise on top of last year’s 6% hike and the 11.8% rate hike before that, all of them cumulative and compounding, it is now overwhelmingly in the community interest to fight these unnecessary exponential cost of living increases. These rate rises are unfair and simply unaffordable for people on fixed incomes.”

The group describes its purpose as the following: to ensure council induced-cost of living increases to do not exceed fixed income increases or the peg; to work for equity of ratepayers and residents; to work for accountability, affordability and best practice in council; to return council to its primary function as a utility service provider not a social service provider.

“Successive Bellingen Shire Councils have redirected Federal Financial Assistance Grants ‘specific road funding’ away from its intended use on roads and into the unnecessary Raleigh Works Depot and Council chamber upgrades,” the press release says. 

“The Council created the infrastructure backlog and multimillion dollar debts and now it wants the community to bail them out of their self-inflicted financial problems.

“Bellingen Shire Council blames everybody but itself, they say rate pegging caused the problem, then they blame the State for their inability to rate forest and park land, then they blame cost shifting of social services from the State to the Council.

The fact is the real cost shifting is from Bellingen Shire Council to the local community and we have had enough.”

Invited to respond to these assertions, Mayor Dominic King said they were completely false.

“Council receives approximately $850,000 per year for the roads component of the Federal Financial Assistance Grant and every dollar is spent on transport infrastructure,” he said. 

“As an example, in 2016/17, Council spent well over $5 million renewing and maintaining road and bridge infrastructure. 

“Council’s Long Term Financial Plan sees an investment of $50 million dollars on its roads and bridges infrastructure over the next 10 years.”

Cr King said any reference to Council having huge debts was incorrect.

“In fact, compared to the NSW state average, Council’s debt is significantly lower and our borrowings are also less than the state’s industry benchmark.

“For 2016/17, Council’s debt service ratio, which measures the cost of servicing debt relative to income, was only 3.97 per cent. For councils to be deemed Fit for the Future this ratio was required to be above zero per cent and below 20 per cent, so Council’s result is at the lower end of this.”

The infrastructure backlog and the need to use debt and special rate variations to address it was a statewide issue, well documented by the NSW Government’s 2013 Infrastructure Audit, Cr King said.

That audit estimated the size of the infrastructure backlog in local communities across the state to be over $7 billion.

Cr King said rate rises were just one of the options Council was deploying to manage its infrastructure and improve its financial performance.

He noted Council had reduced its financial deficit from $9 million dollars in 2014 to a surplus of $0.28 million in 2017 – a net improvement of $9.2 million dollars over the last three years.

“More than half of the shire is unrateable and I am involved in a Mayoral working group who are pushing state government to pay rates on state owned land,” Cr King said.